This repository contains the complete collection of ansible playbooks and roles for the Arch Linux infrastructure.
[[TOC]]
Install these packages:
- terraform
- python-click
- python-jmespath
- moreutils (for playbooks/tasks/reencrypt-vault-key.yml)
All systems are set up the same way. For the first time setup in the Hetzner rescue system,
run the provisioning script: ansible-playbook playbooks/tasks/install_arch.yml -l $host
.
The provisioning script configures a sane basic systemd with sshd. By design, it is NOT idempotent.
After the provisioning script has run, it is safe to reboot.
Once in the new system, run the regular playbook: HCLOUD_TOKEN=$(misc/get_key.py misc/vaults/vault_hetzner.yml hetzner_cloud_api_key) ansible-playbook playbooks/$hostname.yml
.
This playbook is the one regularity used for administrating the server and is entirely idempotent.
When adding a new machine you should also deploy our SSH known_hosts file and update the SSH hostkeys file in this git repo.
For this you can simply run the playbooks/tasks/sync-ssh-hostkeys.yml
playbook and commit the changes it makes to this git repository.
It will also deploy any new SSH host keys to all our machines.
The root_access.yml
file contains the vault_default_pgpkeys
variable which
determines the users that have access to the default
vault, as well as the
borg backup keys. A separate super
vault exists for storing highly sensitive
secrets like Hetzner credentials; access to the super
vault is controlled by
the vault_super_pgpkeys
variable.
All the keys should be on the local user gpg keyring and at minimum be
locally signed with --lsign-key
(or if you use TOFU, have --tofu-policy good
). This is necessary for running any of the reencrypt-vault-default-key
,
reencrypt-vault-super-key
or fetch-borg-keys
tasks.
We use packer to build snapshots on hcloud to use as server base images. In order to use this, you need to install packer and then run
packer build -var $(misc/get_key.py misc/vaults/vault_hetzner.yml hetzner_cloud_api_key --format env) packer/archlinux.pkr.hcl
This will take some time after which a new snapshot will have been created on the primary hcloud archlinux project.
For the sandbox project please run
packer build -var $(misc/get_key.py misc/vaults/vault_hetzner.yml hetzner_cloud_sandbox_infrastructure_api_key --format env | sed 's/_sandbox_infrastructure//') -var install_ec2_public_keys_service=true packer/archlinux.pkr.hcl
We use terraform in two ways:
- To provision a part of the infrastructure on hcloud (and possibly other service providers in the future)
- To declaratively configure applications
For both of these, we have set up a separate terraform script. The reason for that is that sadly terraform can't have
providers depend on other providers so we can't declaratively state that we want to configure software on a server which
itself needs to be provisioned first. Therefore, we use a two-stage process. Generally speaking, scenario 1. is configured in
tf-stage1
and 2. is in tf-stage2
. Maybe in the future, we can just have a single terraform script for everything
but for the time being, this is what we're stuck with.
The very first time you run terraform on your system, you'll have to init it:
cd tf-stage1 # and also tf-stage2
terraform init -backend-config="conn_str=postgres:https://terraform:$(../misc/get_key.py ../group_vars/all/vault_terraform.yml vault_terraform_db_password)@state.archlinux.org?sslmode=verify-full"
After making changes to the infrastructure in tf-stage1/archlinux.tf
, run
terraform plan
This will show you planned changes between the current infrastructure and the desired infrastructure. You can then run
terraform apply
to actually apply your changes.
The same applies to changed application configuration in which case you'd run
it inside of tf-stage2
instead of tf-stage1
.
We store terraform state on a special server that is the only hcloud server NOT managed by terraform so that we do not run into a chicken-egg problem. The state server is assumed to just exist so in an unlikely case where we have to entirely redo this infrastructure, the state server would have to be manually set up.
All hosts should be relaying email through our primary mx host (currently 'mail.archlinux.org'). See docs/email.md for full details.
Most web services with a nginx configuration, can be put into a maintenance mode, by running the playbook with a maintenance variable:
ansible-playbook -e maintenance=true playbooks/<playbook.yml>
This also works with a tag:
ansible-playbook -t <tag> -e maintenance=true playbooks/<playbook.yml>
As long as you pass the maintenance variable to the playbook run, the web service will stay in maintenance mode. As soon as you stop passing it on the command line and run the playbook again, the regular nginx configuration should resume and the service should accept requests by the end of the run.
Passing maintenance=false, will also prevent the regular nginx configuration from resuming, but will not put the service into maintenance mode.
Keep in mind that passing the maintenance variable to the whole playbook, without any tag, will make all the web services that have the maintenance mode in them, to be put in maintenance mode. Use tags to affect only the services you want.
Documentation on how to add the maintenance mode to a web service is inside docs/maintenance.md.
Arch-audit can be used to find servers in need of updates for security issues.
ansible all -a "arch-audit -u"
The following steps should be used to update our managed servers:
- pacman -Syu
- sync
- checkservices
- reboot
For updating a lot of servers in a more unattended manner, the following playbook can be used:
ansible-playbook playbooks/tasks/upgrade-servers.yml [-l SUBSET]
It runs pacman -Syu
on the targeted hosts in batches and then reboots them.
If any server fails to reboot successfully, the rolling update stops and
further batches are cancelled. To display the packages updated on each host,
you can pass the --diff
option to ansible-playbook.
Using this update method, .pacnew
files are left unmerged which is OK for
most configuration files that are managed by Ansible. However, care must be
taken with updates that require manual intervention (e.g. major PostgreSQL
releases).
This section has been moved to docs/servers.md.
- Make sure you have all the GPG keys at least locally signed
- Run the
playbooks/tasks/fetch-borg-keys.yml
playbook - Make sure the playbook runs successfully and check the keys under the borg-keys directory
Follow the instructions in group_vars/all/root_access.yml.
We use BorgBackup for all of our backup needs. We have a primary backup storage as well as an additional offsite backup.
See docs/backups.md for detailed backup information.
Our Gitlab installation uses Omnibus to run Gitlab on Docker. Updating Gitlab is as simple as running the ansible gitlab playbook:
ansible-playbook playbooks/gitlab.archlinux.org.yml --diff -t gitlab
To view the current Gitlab version visit this url
A bunch of once-only admin task scripts can be found in one-shots/
.
We try to minimize the amount of manual one-shot admin work we have to do but sometimes for some migrations it might be necessary to have such scripts.